It sounds proprietary. My child, my show. It is and it isn’t. I’m a father: a caregiver, a custodian, a mentor, a warrior, and sometimes we went to war with each other. My wife and I took one of our daughters to college this week, to help her move in and get all of us oriented to this new reality. Man, did it become supremely clear how much we would always love and miss her, how proud we were of her, and that she was never truly ‘ours’ to begin with.
Well. Was, but wasn’t.
Maybe a lot of you out there can relate, or have your own wording for it. Surreal for me is a good one. Gooey and surreal. The fabric of our family, wherein we had all seemed like ‘one’, was pulling apart and showing its precious, but barely tangible threads.
As they say in our business, “The kid has legs!” Our daughter will fly far with her intelligence, perseverance, talent, and sheer grit! So, what do you do when that precious dram of joy is finally being shared with a broader world? For me, I wave the parental booster flags, jump up, and do my Prince splits (another time perhaps!) and then - grieve a little.